"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."
Edmund Burke. What happened on this Day in History?

Monday, October 14, 2013

This Day in History: Oct 14, 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis begins

The Cuban Missile Crisis begins on October 14, 1962, bringing the United States
and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear conflict. Photographs
taken by a high-altitude U-2 spy plane offered incontrovertible evidence
that Soviet-made medium-range missiles in Cuba—capable of carrying
nuclear warheads—were now stationed 90 miles off the American coastline.

Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union over Cuba had been steadily increasing since the failed April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, in which Cuban refugees, armed and trained by the United States, landed in Cuba and attempted to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro.
Though the invasion did not succeed, Castro was convinced that the
United States would try again, and set out to get more military
assistance from the Soviet Union. During the next year, the number of
Soviet advisors in Cuba rose to more than 20,000. Rumors began that
Russia was also moving missiles and strategic bombers onto the island.

Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev may have decided to so dramatically up
the stakes in the Cold War
for several reasons. He may have believed that the United States was
indeed going to invade Cuba and provided the weapons as a deterrent.
Facing criticism at home from more hard-line members of the Soviet
communist hierarchy, he may have thought a tough stand might win him
support. Khrushchev also had always resented that U.S. nuclear missiles
were stationed near the Soviet Union (in Turkey, for example), and
putting missiles in Cuba might have been his way of redressing the
imbalance. Two days after the pictures were taken, after being developed
and analyzed by intelligence officers, they were presented to President
Kennedy. During the next two weeks, the United States and the Soviet
Union would come as close to nuclear war as they ever had, and a fearful
world awaited the outcome.